


Girls Who Are Not Saints

by TheColorBlue



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Everybody Lives, Food Issues, Gen, Mental Health Issues, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The reality was that the fate of the world did not actually rest on the shoulders of young girls.<br/>Note: not canon compliant; kind of AU, kind of experimenting with elements of the show, etc. etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls Who Are Not Saints

The reality was that the fate of the world did not actually rest on the shoulders of young girls. Kyubey was a lying liar who was harvesting the emotional energy of human girls—yes, for the good of its own faraway and alien civilization—but the stability and health of the _whole universe_ was not and could not be upheld by the emotional transformation of human individuals. When the girls of Mitakihara discovered this, their battlefields changed. Witches had to be taken care of, of course, but the real enemy was the tiny manipulator who preyed on children, enticing them with the promise of wishes, then allowing them to wither away into despair and death. As well: it would turn out that while personal grief and hopelessness accelerated the process of transforming into a witch, personal steps to reverse the process also had impact.

They stood together around the corpse of Kyubey: just one in a string of them. They still needed to figure out a better way of dealing with the little conniver.

The sun was setting down, lengthening all the shadows of the alley around them.

Sayaka held her soul gem in her hands. It was darker than all the rest.

Homura ran a hand through her hair a little, and said, soft as a stone, “Kyubey took our souls out of our bodies, but he does not hold them now. Actually, the entire notion of the contract is a farce—incubators catalyze the magical girl transformation, but in the end: they have no power over us.” She looked over at Sayaka. “No one does. Every magical girl has to find her own path, her own way of cleansing her soul gem if she wishes to do it independently of using grief seeds.”

Sayaka clenched her hand, the gem reverting to its ring form. “What do you know?” she snapped. “As if it were that easy to become a saint… As if there were anything left in the world worth protecting, anything left to cleanse—“

Kyoko bared her teeth a little, and then reached over to shake Sayaka. She was not gentle. “Ehhh, what’s this garbage I’m hearing out of you? If you’re still angry about the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, that’s fine, but if you give into grief, guess who you’ll be forcing to take you down.” She pulled another pocky stick out of her box stuffed into her pocket and crunched down on it hard. “ _Idiot._ ”

\--

Even girls who held their souls outside their bodies aged at a normal rate. By the age of sixteen, the magical girls of Mitakihara were veterans.

Sayaka had yet to transform into the witch called Oktavia von Seckendorff, but it remained a near thing. In fact, she remained the only magical girl somewhat dependent on the purifying properties of grief seeds. Even Kyoko had managed to wean herself off in the past half year. Kyoko’s gem was never as clear as maybe Madoka’s, or even Mami’s, but she was pretty confident nowadays about standing on her own legs.

Kyoko helped Sayaka ration grief seeds off. She always said that a pampered girl like Sayaka wouldn’t know what to do, and she’d botch it up for sure. They sat on a bench outside Mami’s apartment complex, and Kyoko counted them off out aloud, looking away while Sayaka cleansed her soul gem. Sayaka’s gem was cloudy, nearly always. They rationed grief seeds to keep the darkness from tipping over. Some days, Sayaka’s gem was clearer, even without the use of grief seeds.

“Heh, that’s a good thing, you know,” Kyoko said, leaning back and crunching down an apple. “It means you’re getting the hang of this.”

Sayaka looked down at her soul gem, and Kyoko could still see a little of all the old grief and anger.

Kyoko tossed her apple core over her shoulder. “… If it would make you feel better, you can beat up on me. Let it all out! No powers. Just fists, like real girls.”

Sayaka just laughed then, a sound traced with both humor and bitterness, but she took Kyoko’s apple when she offered it under her nose.

\--

Later, they had gone up to Mami’s apartment for the usual after-school teas.

Some days were better than others for Sayaka.

This day was almost a good one.

Kyoko had gone to open the door of the balcony—a goddamned balcony with a view, Mami had everything, of course—while Homura and Mami and Madoka played at tea parties , like civilized, giggling girls. Well, Mami and Madoka were giggling anyway, Homura still went around like a queen. Sayaki had followed and helped with the doorstop, then stood up and looked out.

“If I really concentrate, I don’t even feel my body anymore,” Sayaka said, as if in an odd remembrance.

“Not this again,” Kyoko said, irritable. “It creeps me the fuck out, even when I have to do it myself. I like feeling my fingers, my little toes even.”

“Stomach, too?”

“I’ll beat you up,” Kyoko warned.

Sayaka said nothing, looking out at the view of the city.

Mami had suggested that maybe Sayaka seek help for her depression. Sayaka was still thinking about it, apparently. Kyoko ground her teeth a little, nearly angry with it, and wondered about all the kinds of problems they had. On the other hand, at least they were still alive. They were still alive as themselves, and more free than they ever had been, two years ago, and under the thumb of Kyubey.

She looked down at the ring on her finger, the lightly clouded redness of it, and then shoved her hand back into her pocket, turning round to demand another slice of cake for tea.

\--

Kyoko lived with Mami, nowadays.

It had taken some doing.

Kyoko had bared her teeth and muttered things about being no one’s charity case, but Mami had pointed out, calmly, that even she herself was merely living off of her parents' inheritance, it wasn’t like she was any different from Kyoko in the respect of charity, except maybe in arbitrary luck.

For a while, Kyoko was like a stray cat. She’d come and she’d go.

Eventually, she stayed, but even with all the food that Mami had, Kyoko still hoarded. She’d staked out the empty “guest” bedroom in Mami’s apartment, now “her bedroom,” for a given value of possession, and lined up bags of non-perishables and other assorted finds. When she wasn’t hunting witches or witch’s familiars, she prowled the back alleys of supermarkets. She’d rescue food that was barely past its expiration date, still fine and perfectly edible really, but tossed out to make room for fresher goods. Waste was hateful, and furthermore, she disliked relying on Mami for anything more than the roof over her head. She’d still eat what Mami offered, her greed knew no bounds, you know, but collecting food always felt like a necessary back-up.

She ate all the time. She could make excuses like, this was in lieu of using grief seeds, the way some people chewed sunflower seeds when they stopped smoking cigarettes. It was all a bunch of crock of course, she knew that if she hadn’t been a magical girl, she would have made herself very sick, a long time back.

This didn’t stop her eating.

\--

While the other girls went to school, Kyoko prowled the streets for witches and Kyubey’s machinizations. They needed to come up with a better way for dealing with this guy.

She destroyed a witch’s familiar out in the park, a creature like a multi-colored dragonfly gone crazy. Afterwards, she sat on top of a climbable dome in the park playground, and looked down at her soul gem. In the past, she would have hoarded grief seeds they way she hoarded food. Nowadays, there’s no need. Even though she could look at it as if it were a separate object, the reality of it was that the soul gem was _her_ , at essense, and even the fact of remembering that, of being completely aware of that reality, was enough to polish away a little of the darkness. Homura had even figured out a kind of meditation technique for dripping out more of the taint, but the way it stood, their soul gems had developed a quality like a chemical buffer—refusing to resist change regardless of outside influences, good or bad. It could be both protection and handicap. Your power reserves ended up dependent on your state of mind, and with Madoka’s nearly endless optimism, she had turned out to be the most powerful of them all. _It could be kind of annoying,_ Kyoko always said, but it wasn’t really.

Kyoko didn’t know what the gradient color of her soul gem at rest said about her, but maybe this was getting too personal. She always made a point, of looking away while Sayaka cleansed her gem, like giving someone privacy while they did something intimately personal, but the reality was that Kyoko always sneaked glances sideways anyway. She didn’t want to see Sayaka become a witch.

Sayaka said sometimes, that maybe witches in the world were inevitable, and that’s why Kyubey would always be around. There would always be people swallowed by grief, cursing the world.

Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Kyoko crunched down on pocky and slithered down from the climbing dome.

Most of the time, she thought: she could really afford to think about the masses like that. Mami worried about upholding justice, and Madoka’s endless reserves of kindness meant that she was always trying to look out for someone else. She even seemed to have rubbed off some of that sentiment onto ice queen Homura.

Girls like Sayaka and herself, though—sometimes she wondered if they had enough on their plates, trying to take care of themselves, and their own well-being. Maybe they had only just enough energy to make sure that they could keep making each day a little better for themselves, and maybe one other person. She would have been okay with that—thinking about herself and her own problems, and looking out for only one other, Miki Sayaka.

She closed her hand around her lightly clouded red soul gem, changing it back to its ring form, and then, for some reason, she thought of Madoka’s truly spectacularly pink soul gem. She laughed then, teeth bared. Some girls were just meant to be saints, but not her, she thought, and then she stuck her hands into her pockets as she walked off in the direction of the school, ready to meet with the other girls, now that their school day was nearly over.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't take credit for certain aspects of Kyoko's characterization at all. [Have some actually geniusly written fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/514164), I don't think I would have paid any attention to Kyoko's eating habits if I hadn't read this first.


End file.
